


The Sum of Your Yesterdays

by Walutahanga



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Betrayal, F/M, Jossed, Parenthood, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1708913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan wasn't the first member to try leaving Stryker's team. He was just the first to be successful. </p><p>Or: an alternate take on Nightcrawler's family history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum of Your Yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

> Set during X-Men Origins, in that space of time between Logan joining Stryker's team and him leaving.

Wraith has a woman. Logan can smell her on him; that faint odor of sex and female perfume.

This technically isn't different from any of the others. Fred has no self control and with Stryker funding him he can afford a different working girl every night. Zero is as meticulous in sex as he is with everything else, visiting the same high class prostitute every two weeks, regular as clockwork. Wade is attractive and charming enough to get sex for free, so long as he keeps the psychosis under wraps. Bradley never smells of sex, just sadness. Logan has long since figured out that he’s meant to be monogamous and wouldn’t curse any woman with his lifestyle. And Victor… well, Logan knows what Victor gets up to. He just tries not to think about it.

But Wraith spends all his off-time with a single woman. He hums in the showers and has that little jaunty spring to his step of a man who’s getting sex on a regular basis. Most tellingly of all; he turns down offers from other women. He’s not just infatuated. He’s faithful.

“So who is she?” Logan asks one day when they're getting changed after a mission. 

“Who?” Wraith tugs on his jacket.

“Your girl.”

Wraith stills.

“How do you know about her?” He asks guardedly.

“The nose doesn’t lie. C’mon, bub. We’ve been working together for months now. What’s she like?”

Wraith closes his locker.

“She’s nothing to do with this place.”

That’s a rejection as plain as a door being slammed in his face. Perhaps Wraith feels bad because he adds;

“Look, this is a whole different world from out there. You think I go home, eat dinner with her, and chat about how many people I shot today? No, I lie my ass off. It’s the same here. In here has nothing to do with out there. I’m not going to come in here and talk about the pot-roast she made me while we’re cleaning blood off our shoes.”

Logan shrugs.

“Fair enough.” He finishes tying his shoelaces. “But you’re going to have to choose, you know. Eventually it’s going to come down to this or her.”

Wraith slams the door on his way out.

* * *

Wraith cools down eventually, and does end up inviting Logan round to dinner. Most likely it's because, of all Wraith's colleagues – with the possible exception of Bradley – Logan is the least likely to come across as being on the wrong side of insane.

The girl’s name is Robin, and there’s one word to describe her. Feisty. She’s small and delicate like a little doll, with creamy skin and russet-red hair, and she tells Logan that there will be no smoking in her house. There’s a perfectly serviceable porch out back if he feels the overwhelming urge, but god help him if he doesn’t use an ashtray. He says ‘yes ma’am’ and makes sure to wipe his shoes on the mat before stepping inside. It should be funny, a tiny little thing like her bossing around big, nasty men like them, but it’s somehow endearing.

He and John retreat to the porch while she finishes cooking dinner. 

“She’s cute,” Logan remarks, puffing on his cigar, and watching the neighbor’s lights through the screen of trees. Somewhere nearby, children are playing in the twilight, laughing and shouting.

“You only say that because she hasn’t thrown a pot at you.” Wraith regards his cigar glumly.

“A pot?”

“I forgot our two month anniversary. It’s the Irish in her – she gets fired up.”

Logan laughs softly. For a while they sit in companionable silence, just the gentle dark and the smell of Robin’s pot roast in the air.

“I’m going to marry her, Logan,” John says suddenly.

“You told Stryker that?”

“Not yet.” John stares off into the darkness. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should just take her away. Germany or Australia or some place. She hasn’t got family to tie her down, so it’d be easy to just… disappear. Pick up again somewhere else and start from scratch.”

“Australia’s not so isolated as it used to be. And Germany’s not a good place for mutants, last I heard.”

“I know, I know.” John is silent for a beat. “I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I knew that there wasn’t an exit ramp on this ride. But that was before her.”

“She’s quite a woman,” Logan agrees.

They sit there a while, finishing their cigars, while the children laugh in the distance, and the bug-zapper buzzes and flickers. Then Robin calls them in for dinner, and they stub out their cigars in the ashtray and head inside.

* * *

It’s not long after that Logan’s called into Stryker’s office. It’s not often anyone’s summoned, and he’s careful to keep an expression of boredom as he stretches out in the chair Stryker’s offered, one boot propped up on the coffee table. Stryker’s lips tighten, but he ignores it.

“I hear that you have met Wraith’s girlfriend," he says. 

“Yeah.” Logan shrugs. “So?”

“Tell me about her.”

“Pretty. Cooks like the devil. Feisty, so she probably fucks like a wildcat.” He’s deliberately crude, hoping to throw Stryker off whatever scent trail he was chasing.

“And Wraith? How does he feel about her?”

“How should I know? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we kill for money. We don’t exactly braid each other’s hair and talk about shit.”

“Yet he invited you round to dinner.”

Logan doesn’t let his expression so much as twitch, but Stryker seems to have meant it as an observation, not an accusation.

“Logan, I want you to keep an eye on him. See if you can find out anything more about this… Robin.” 

Logan shrugs again.

“You think she’s going to be a problem?”

“Yes, and no,” Stryker says evasively. “I’d like to know more before making any decisions.” He looks intently at Logan. “Can I rely on you?”

“Sure.” Logan stands, rolling his neck until it cracks. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

* * *

A few days later they’re in Mexico, smoking out a group of militants living in an abandoned house. Everywhere stinks of the fire, and people and sirens are screaming in the distance. Wraith is standing off to the side, shot gun in hand, watching their surroundings. Logan wanders over to stand beside him.

“Australia would have better weather than this,” he remarks, scrubbing a hand through sweat-drenched hair. “How come we never get to go there?”

Wraith glances at him sharply, then away.

“No mutants in Australia,” he says, equally casual. “Least not any interesting ones.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Logan drifts back to the others. He doesn’t look at Wraith, and Wraith doesn’t look at him the whole flight home. Logan says good night as Wraith leaves the base, and Wraith returns the sentiment, not looking back.

That night, Logan lies on his bunk, looking up the ceiling, and thinks of red hair and a slim hand clasped in Wraith’s and a future beyond all of this.

* * *

Wraith doesn’t report for his next assignment. Stryker’s furious. Logan tries to look indifferent.

When Stryker sends him and Zero round to Wraith’s house, it’s empty. A pot of half-peeled potatoes is still sitting in the sink, as if someone left halfway through dinner preparations. In the bedroom, drawers stand open and empty.

“Wraith split,” Zero says. “Un-fucking-believable.”

He catches sight of a cookie jar with a smiley face and his mouth twists like it’s a personal affront. Logan sees a bra that had been left behind, and kicks it under the bed, out of sight.

“Maybe his girlfriend got sick,” he suggests. “And he took her to the hospital.” 

“And he didn’t call in?” Zero says scathingly.

“Okay, so Wraith got sick, and she took him to the hospital. There are other explanations.” Logan keeps his voice reasonable, calm. He figures he can buy Wraith at least a day with phoning into hospitals and emergency rooms.

Zero’s watching him, mouth hard and angry.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says in a low, dangerous voice. Logan lifts a brow, shifting his weight very slightly. His claws tickle the inside of his knuckles 

“Really.”

“You’re protecting him. You’re hoping if you buy him enough time he’ll come crawling back to Stryker.”

Logan relaxes.

“He’s freaking out. I’ve seen it before. Give him a few days; he’ll come to his senses.”

Zero sneers, and catches sight of the cookie jar again. He raises a pistol and shoots through the smiling face. Shards of china scatter across the table and Zero holsters his weapon.

“Lets get out of here. All the domesticity is giving me hives."

* * *

They don’t find Wraith in a day, or in three days.

Logan’s begun to allow himself the first, faint glimmerings of hope, when Wraith teleports into the barracks one morning.

“STRYKER!” He roars, storming through the halls. “STRYKER!"  

Logan’s only got one shoe on, but he does his best to stop him.

“John. John, calm down –”

Wraith just teleports past him, and past Victor as well, who makes a futile grab for his shirt. Logan swears and yanks his shoe on, running after them. What the fuck had gone wrong? Wraith should be on the other side of the world right now.

Wraith slams open the door to Stryker’s office and teleports over to the desk. He hauls Stryker to his feet with two fists bunched in his shirt.

“Why John.” Stryker’s small, smug smile never dims. “Did you have a pleasant sabbatical?”

“Where is she?” Wraith hisses. “Tell me where she is, or I’ll teleport you inside a wall.”

At the door, Logan edges inside to the left. Victor slinks to the right, but Stryker signals to him, and he stops.

“That’s information I’m happy to share with you,” Stryker says smoothly. “Logan, if you would get the file from on top of the cabinet…?”

Moving slowly, watching Victor, Logan picks up the folder and tosses it down in front of Stryker. Wraith glances at it disdainfully.

“What is this?”

“This is a file on Raven Darkeholme, also known as Mystique. An assassin and spy, and a zealous believer in mutant superiority.”

“I don’t care about that shit. I’m asking you about my _girlfriend_.”

“The woman we’re speaking of is one and the same.”

At Wraith’s silence, Stryker motions.

“Go on. Open it. Take a look. I think you’ll find the evidence… compelling.”

“I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth. You have Robin somewhere. Tell me where she is.”

“I only wish I had her. She’d have made an excellent acquisition. She’s a shapeshifter, did you know? Can assume any face or form she wants. Quite a talented mimic as well, and truly gifted when it comes to manipulation.” Wraith is silent again, and Stryker adds; “She disappeared, didn’t she? Probably asked you to get her something and when you came back, she was gone. No sign of a struggle. She probably took money too, and anything of value.”

Wraith slowly releases him. He opens the file, and Logan thinks he isn’t imagining the very slight shaking of Wraith’s hand as he turns the pages.

“‘Robin’ wasn’t real,” Stryker said. “I’m sorry. But the woman you loved never existed. She was just a mask worn by a very talented actress.”

Wraith’s head is bent low over the file. Stryker keeps talking.

“So far as we can tell, she’s been working the mutant agenda for some time, and our work must have come to her attention. She probably chose you as…”

“What? The easiest mark?”

“The most convenient I’d say. We all know Fred’s limitations. The chances of him retaining anything useful are slight to say the least. Wade and Zero are too trigger happy. Victor and Logan are animals. No woman would willingly submit to their attentions, not once she understood what they were. That leaves just you and Bradley. Congratulations. She must have decided you were the less repellent.”

Wraith’s fingers curl about the folder, squeezing the cardboard. Stryker laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t feel bad, son. Mystique has been playing this game for a very long time. She’s very good at manipulating people. You’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last.”

Wraith looks up.

“I want her,” he says. “I want her _dead_.”

Stryker studies him a long moment, and smiles, slow and satisfied.

“I believe that can be arranged.”

* * *

Nothing more is spoken of Wraith’s attempt to leave. There’s a new ruthlessness in his work, and Stryker only seems pleased. And why shouldn’t he be? One of his dogs had tried to jump the fence, only to return more loyal than ever. Logan would suspect him of orchestrating it, except he can’t ever see a mutant-supremist like Mystique working with Stryker.  

Wraith never talks about it, but Logan knows he’s searching for Mystique obsessively, reaching out to every contact he has. But Mystique is very good at remaining unnoticed, and it’s another six months before they hear anything.

* * *

The information comes from Stryker, who passes it down like a tit-bit to a particularly well-behaved dog. Mystique is living in Germany with a blind woman named Irene Adler.

“A mutant of some kind,” Stryker says, lip curling. “She’s a known associate of Mystique. Frankly, I’m surprised Mystique went to her at all. She should know better.”

“Maybe she’s hurt.” There’s an avid light in Wraith’s eyes. “We should move quickly.”

“Of course.” Stryker scribbled a signature on a form. “Logan will go with you.”

“I don’t need any help for this. I can take her out myself.”

“Nevertheless. I’d feel more comfortable if you had someone watching your back.”

His eyes go to Logan, and Logan gets it. Stryker wants him there as his eyes and ears, to make sure that Wraith doesn’t go soft at the last minute.

Logan has no problem with letting him think that.

* * *

Bradley flies them to Germany. He stays on the plane while Wraith and Logan walk about a mile in the dark to get the location Stryker gave them. It’s a small cottage in the ass end of nowhere. The lights are on inside, golden light spilling out across the lawn. The door is unlocked.  

As they enter, a middle-aged woman walks out of the back room carrying an armful of towels. Her eyes go wide when she sees them, and she opens her mouth to scream. Wraith shoots her, point blank.

“John!” Logan shouts. 

“It could have been her. She’s a shapeshifter. You can’t trust a fucking shapeshifter.” Wraith is re-loading his gun. There’s a look in his eyes that Logan has seen in Victor’s too many times to count.

Logan sees a movement behind the ajar door and kicks it all the way open. The door bounces off the wall with a crash, but by then, Logan has already stopped.

One woman in the room is clearly blind, her cataracts milky-white, and she is kneeling on the bed beside the other woman. This woman is covered in blue scales, one hand wrapped protectively about her distended stomach, and she is glaring at Logan, her lip curled in a feral snarl. The room smells heavy, of blood and other things.

Wraith appears in a flash, his gun pointed at the bed.

“John, stop!” Logan moves faster than he has in his whole life, getting between the gun and the two women. Wraith pauses.

“Get out of the way, Logan.”

“I’m not going to let you do something you’ll regret.”

“You won’t, because I’m not going to regret this.”

Behind him, one of the women makes a small sound that could have been pain or fear. Logan curls his hands into fists. He doesn’t want to bring out the claws, but if John doesn’t put down the gun…

“She’s pregnant, John.” He keeps his voice level and reasonable.

“She’s a shapeshifter. She can make herself look like anything and no one would know the difference. That’s what she _does_.”

“I know the difference! I can smell it!”

Finally – finally – Wraith really hesitates. His eyes go from Logan to the bed.

“What?” His voice is weak.

“She might be able to fake the stomach, but I don’t think she can fake her water breaking.”

Wraith lowers the gun. He doesn’t seem to have the energy to hold it up or move forward. He stares at Mystique like he’s never seen anything so completely mind-twisting in his entire life. Satisfied he’s not going to shoot anyone just yet, Logan turns back to the bed.

Mystique is still glaring at him, lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl that might have been pain or rage. She’s taking little breaths, scaled breasts heaving.

“My hero,” she says. There’s no trace of Irish accent. Even with her multi-tonal voice, the sarcasm is clear. “Now go wash your hands.”

“What?”

“Someone has to deliver this baby, and Wraith just shot my midwife.”

“I – what about…?” He casts around for someone who actually would know what they're doing.

“You’re not blind, and you’re not currently having an aneurism.” Mystique casts a contemptuous look at Wade, who has leaned against the wall and is staring blankly at her. “That makes you the most qualified person in the room.” 

“I’ll go get –”

“No time,” the blind woman says, just as Mystique yells, throwing her head back. "He's coming now."

Mystique pants as she glares up at Logan.

“It’s coming _now_ ,” she spits. “I don’t need you to check my dilation or turn the fucking baby. All I need you to do is catch." 

“Okay, okay.” Logan pulls off his jacket and goes to wash his hands in the sink. Jesus Christ, they’d better name the kid after him for this. He scrubs his hands with soap and hot water, and hurries back into the room as Mystique starts to scream again. Wraith is still leaning against the wall, completely useless for anything. Logan kneels between Mystique’s legs, and tries to remember everything from the last time he’d seen this done, which was about fifty years ago give or take. 

“This is why you left?” Wraith bursts out. Mystique glares at him. 

“I left because you were no longer of any use to me,” she hisses. “This was just the icing on the cake.”

“I walked away from Stryker to protect you!”

“Well that was your mistake, wasn’t it.” Mystique breaks off into a howl as the head crowns, and Logan can no longer follow the conversation because he has another crisis in his hands. Literally.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What?” Irene leans over Mystique’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” Logan wonders if that color skin is natural. “Just keep pushing.”

“Is this even my child?” Wraith says, and Logan glares at him.

“John. Shut up.”

Mystique made a noise very similar to one Victor might make.

“Not that I’d have any moral or personal problems with cheating on you," she spits. "But yes it does happen to be yours, you _prick_.”

“Both of you shut up,” Logan says. “Mystique, keep pushing.”

Mystique mutters something that sounds a lot like ‘race traitors’, then pushes and huffs and delivers a bright blue baby boy into Logan’s hands.

* * *

“What are we going to do?” Logan asks Wraith later, as they smoke cigars on the lawn: one to calm the nerves of the alleged father, and one for the man who’d delivered the brat. The smell burns away the scent of afterbirth. Inside the cottage, Irene is helping Mystique clean up. The midwife’s body is cooling under a sheet in the kitchen. “It’s your call.”

There are, of course, a number of things they can do. They can take the baby and kill the two women. They can kill all three. They can let them go. They can find a nice place for the kid to grow up. They can take him back to Stryker.

Logan knows what he’s going to do. He just wants to be sure that Wraith will be on board first.

“I like the name Kurt.” Wraith blows a smoke ring in the air. “It was my Pa’s name. What do you think?”

“It’s a good strong name. Shows character. How do you want to handle this?”

Wraith turns to look at him.

“That’s my kid in there, Wolverine,” he says very seriously. “Just to be clear – whatever you might imagine we’re gonna do, Stryker aint ever getting his hands on him. Ever. And I will go through you and Victor and whatever scary shit Wade pulls to make sure of that.”

“We’re clear.” Logan sticks his cigar back between his teeth. “We should get a move on. Bradley’s gonna be expecting us back soon.”

* * *

They carry the midwife’s body into the bedroom. They tear and bloody it up some to make it look authentic. Then they use petrol from the car, dousing the bed and walls. Logan carries Mystique out. Wraith carries the baby, tucked inside his coat, and Irene follows, clutching at Wraith’s elbow. She huddles next to Mystique on the lawn as Logan throws the remains of his cigar, and the cottage goes up in flames.  

“You’ll need to keep a low profile,” he tells them. “Don’t go near any old acquaintances. And I’d stay out of Canada or the US for a while.”

Mystique shoots him a look like she’s insulted he thought he needed to tell her this. She’s already shifted into the likeness of a careworn woman with dark hair and a lined, forgettable face. Wraith is still holding the baby tucked against his chest, one hand supporting the small head, his head bent as he murmurs so softly that only Logan can hear;

“…you’re gonna be a little different from the other kids on the playground, but don’t let those little punks push you around. My pa told me to be proud of the color of my skin, and I’m gonna telling you the same thing. Blue’s a fine shade to wear...”

Logan stares into the wind, and hums loudly to block out the rest.

Mystique clears her throat.

“We should go,” she says loudly. Wraith presses a kiss to his son’s forehead – the first and last time he will ever kiss his son – and hands the baby over to her. Then they look at each other. Logan stares resolutely at the faint silvery light on the horizon, stares until his eyes water. When he looks back, they’re standing with that same distance between them, the baby squirming in Mystique’s arms.

Logan reaches across to touch the baby’s fuzzy blue head and mutters:

“Take care, elf.”

Mystique gives him a flat look.

“Don't think this means I owe you any favors,” she says.  “I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

“Likewise.”

Mystique bares her teeth in an almost-smile. 

* * *

"You could have gone with them," Logan says to John as they walk across the field to the waiting plane. 

 _You could still go with them_ , is what he means. Mystique might be a shape-shifter but even she couldn't move fast after giving birth, and she had a blind woman and a baby to slow her down. John could still find them, if he goes now. 

But John is wiping his bloody hands on his shirt. 

“No,” he says quietly. “There’s no exit ramp on this ride.”

The jet engines are already warming up; the ramp descending, waiting to take them back to Stryker.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written back when X-Men Origins came out and is based off the non-canon tie-in game which suggested Wraith was Kurt's father. It makes absolutely no sense (unless Kurt was a hell of a lot younger than he looked) and is pretty well jossed by the presence of Azazel in First Class, but still. My brain looked at this and went 'hmm...'
> 
> The title comes from The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb. The full quote is "Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less."


End file.
